We've seen cooler conversions and cooking pot techniques, but converting a cheap slow cooker into a sous vide cooking station might make the most sense of all. The whole project is under $100, less if you own a cooker, and fairly easy.

The gear and how-to come through CHOW and author Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks, an excerpt of which we've previously featured. In a CHOW video, Potter shows the basic setup for cobbling together an extension cord, a thermostatic controller, and your slow cooker. The result is a container that holds your food at whatever temperature you need, so you can pull off treats like sous vide steak without worrying about overdoing anything.